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BEFORE READING THIS POST PLEASE READ JAKE'S POST ABOUT PARIS IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY. DANK U.

As the Patter to my Stein promised in his most recent blog (the one from about 10 min ago) this is the blog following our most recent wanderings into Berlin. To start off, Berlin is an old city and jam packed with good history and good tourism. There is loads of WWII and Cold War/communism history of which we experienced almost none. The extent of our tourism was a walk past the Reichstag, playing tag through a $27 million holocaust memorial, (you would have too if you saw how fun it was, don't judge) doing the "John Wall" dance in front of the Berlin Wall, and a tour through the Jewish Museum, which was pretty tight. But how fun is that touristy stuff anyway? Here's what Berlin was all about:

I carry around Rick Steves' "Best of Europe 2011" book as my own person tour guide. A shout out to Rick is essentially a shout out to my awesome sister, Rebecca, who taught me the works of Euro travel (galavanting as she most recently called it) and she was taught by Rick. She and I have an old saying, never leave home without Rick (Steves that is), slick (slicker rain coat), and the cam (for capturing beauty/comedy). Thank you Rebecca for providing so much joy in my life, and that includes Rick Steves'. Anyway, even though Rick's back hurts from carrying me and my friends around Europe for a month now, the boys in the group were still doubters. So when it came time to find a place to go out our first night in Berlin, I of course turned to Rick and found a popular pub in downtown East-Berlin called Aufsturz. It took 1 hour to find as we couldn't ask for directions because I was the only person who knew the name of the pub, and I could neither pronounce it or spell it..or remember the name at all. Somehow we found Aufsturz, and it was everything we could have dreamed a Berlin pub would be. It had over 120 different Beers, 40 different whiskeys, and nachos. Beer was about 3 Euro for a pint. Not only is that crazy cheap, but we're talking about premium quality German beer here. Looking at the menu we all felt like little kids in a candy shop. By the end of the night the boys of the group gave Rick Steves a nickname which we only refer to him now. He is now "the Deliverer" because he delivered that night, he delivered the next day by leading us to amazing German curry-wursts at a restaurant we dubbed "the Viteks of Berlin," and he will deliver again as he without fail always does.

The night did not end there, but for us felt like it was just getting started. As we were taking the U-Bahn back to our hostel around 1ish we hopped on a train and sat across from a more than drunk dude. His night was way past the point of fun and he was borderline passed out holding a grocery bag of throw up. This guy was at that point of drunkenness where if your friends tell you in the morning that you ate an entire onion and peed in the closet your response is, "oh thank goodness that's all." On top of that, he had a beautiful girl taking care of him, rubbing his back and wiping the drool from his lips, HA! They hit their stop and just as they head out the exit, another drunk dude is dragged in the opposite door by his two friends and sits in the exact same seat as the guy who just left. A guy sitting at the end of the train starts laughing and yells, "One in, one out!" Once again, we have amazing candid video, this time the credit is owed to Jake Patterson. For your viewing pleasure:



As soon as we got out of the U-Bahn and are laughing about what just happened, out of nowhere two fireworks fly over the sky and explode. We felt like it was for our personal entertainment and brought about wonderful confusion/laughter. Out of glee I jumped on top of a sidewalk pole almost murdering my rear end and Matt Dysart hurdled a sign that we were all hoping he wouldn't make. The night came to a close with 2 hours of pillow talk featuring a competition of who could name the most Disney Channel original movies, in which I dropped "Eddie's Million Dollar Cook-off" before losing to Dysart's "Motocrossed." We also exchanged "Hook" quotes, and impressions of R2D2's scream that he busts out when he malfunctions. Yeah, it was a good night.

A highlight from our next day came at the end of the night when our British hostel friends came in after a long night of partying while we were all asleep. As promised Kevin Beach woke up and yelled "The British are Coming!! The British are Coming!" which they did not find as funny as we did.

That almost made the KBMOTW, but my favorite Kevin Beach Moment of the Week was every time he tried to say anything that was in German. Rawspec to him for finding our train schedule to Berlin, but I couldn't help but laugh as he fearlessly tried to pronounce the names of every one of our stops. He would also say our U-Bahn stops and street names audibly, which usually looked like this: fredrouhdahlshafhaaabstraße, and clearly butcher the mess out of the German language. By the way, we never actually figured out what ß meant, thus the title of the blog entry. After Beach made a fool of himself trying to pronounce crazy German rubbish he would give his goofy laugh that follows pretty much any joke he makes. Love that man.

Favorite of our sayings from the week: "What a country" (usually referring to the incredibly cheap beer prices found throughout Germany)

Now that is some good galavanting.